Couple noob questions...

[Nog]

Ok, I noticed last game when I put a city far away from my first two, my gold suddenly went into the negative territory where I was the leader in income (by luck I guess).

So I'm assuming this is because each hex of road cost maintenance and trying to connect that city to my others was costing too much?

(I'm playing pangea map where it's basically one big continent, 4 opponents, 8 CS to learn before I bring naval aspect into play)

Is that why my gold went down or was it improving hexes I really didn't need to improve and creating buildings I might not have needed?

Assuming there are resources that are nowhere close to your first city or two (i.e. steel in this case was all the way over and two deposits were only 4 hexes apart so I wanted it!)...

Do you build a city farther out but just don't connect it?

And in my new game (quit that one once I saw what I did to my economy), there is large lake seperating my first city from where I also want one near my enemies and some GREAT resources all bunched up.

Is it wiser to put two new cities on either side of the lake, use roads to connect them, then use harbors I think to create trade via the lake?

In other words instead of:

city 1: X --------road around lake------(lake)------road around lake---------X :city 2

Is it better to do:

city 1: X ---road----: city 2 (lake) city 3: ----road---- :city 4

This way I have less road and stuff that can block my road plus two more cities at least benefiting me...?

 

[Nog]

Selfish bmup.

Have game paused awaiting answer so I know what to do HA!

:/

 

[CaptainBinky]

Roads cost 1 gold per tile per turn to maintain, so a long road can really eat into your budget esp early on. Railroad costs 2 per turn. What I haven't tried yet is whether a coastal city with a harbour connecting it to the capital will in turn connect any cities connected to it via roads.

edit: er, I seem to have just repeated what you said. I'm, no help

 

[Nog]

I'm sure it will connect them, just not sure of what I'm not considering.

Also building that long road takes time so maybe for now it's best for me to have this as a satelite city...

Also, I messed up - this is Iron, not Steel but it's early and I'm wanting to go full military this game (I find doing culture or science etc. to win is boring - I like battles ).

So I want to control these strategic resources and take out a couple enemies early...

 

[Nog]

Ok, question #4712636. If each city is touching a river that empties into a common ocean even if on opposite sides of continent, will the harbor building allow me to connect them that way?

Obviously a road/tracks helps move units but...

 

[h@@kon]

I'm just a noob myself, but looking at the economic overview the trade route in my game exceeds the cost of road. + the effect of connecting resources.

And you get no trade route without road? At least that is my experience so far.

 

[shamsael]

The value of the trade route will go up as your cities grow.

As far as your harbour question, I think the harbour has an upkeep of 3, and you'll need two of them to connect trade across the lake, so if building the road around the lake requires more than 6 tiles of road, you're better off with the harbour.

 

[aguds]

Adding some noobquestions:

Can I see relations with leaders somewhere, like in IV? I.e "-5 'cause you got a ugly hat."
Is it stupid to put mines on every tile possible even though there are no real resources there?
Is there anything called "too many farms"?
Does a pact of cooperation/secrecy do anything special and if so can I see the effects or stats somewhere?
And last; where are my Vikings? Are they DLC or something?
And laster; What puts most strain on the load-time between turns? Number of Civs/CS or map size?